The present invention relates to a suspension level microactuator. More particularly, it relates to a microactuator element located on a suspension arm in a disc drive system to selectively move a transducer with respect to a rotatable disc.
The density of data tracks on magnetic disks continues to increase, requiring more precise positioning of the transducer head. Conventionally, head positioning is accomplished by operating an actuator arm with a large scale actuation motor, such as a voice coil motor, to position a head on a flexure at the of the suspension arm. The large scale motor lacks sufficient resolution to effectively accommodate high track density discs. A high resolution head positioning mechanism, or microactuator, is advantageous to accommodate the high density discs.
One design for high resolution head positioning involves using a high resolution microactuator element in addition to the conventional low resolution motor creating a dual stage actuator. Several designs for the use of piezoelectric (PZT) elements as microactuator elements have been proposed but they are costly and complex to design and assemble. There is a need for a lower cost microactuator arrangement.